


The Origin of the Universe

by all_these_ghosts



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance probably, The X-Files Revival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 20:23:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8071498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_these_ghosts/pseuds/all_these_ghosts
Summary: "I've already buried you once."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Massive, massive thanks to kateyes224 for beta-ing multiple drafts and rescuing this story from the abyss.
> 
> Set some time after the revival, ignoring 10x06 because obviously. Scully freaks out about mortality and the ultimate fate of the universe in the middle of the night (so say we all).

"Mulder," she says, late. "It was all a joke, wasn’t it?"

"What?" His voice is blurry, confused; he has no context for her question. He might've even been asleep. She turns in his arms to face him and his eyes are still closed.

It’s the middle of the night and pitch black in their old house. She’s only been back for a week, most of her stuff is still in D.C., but she’s starting to forget that she ever left. After years of trying to fend it off with flashlights, the darkness finally feels like home. This country darkness, this darkness she chose.

Scully licks her lips, suddenly nervous. "I'm going to die one day." It doesn’t sound like a question.

He holds her tighter, but his voice is still groggy. "Not any time soon, okay?"

"No, I mean." She wishes she could swallow the words. "Clyde Bruckman. Alfred Fellig. I--"

His eyes lock on hers. "Are you asking me if I think you're immortal?"

"I know it's ridiculous, but--"

”What if you were? Think about it, Scully,” he says, his voice shedding its early-morning creakiness. His anxious fingers start tracing circles on her bare skin, just under the hem of her shirt; he blinks the sleep from his eyes. “You would witness all of human existence from this point forward. You’d learn things that no one else knows, you could make connections that no one else could--"

She cuts him off. "Mulder, immortality is a curse."

"Maybe," he says. "For some people."

"I’m not a hypothetical."

"We’re talking about the sum total of human knowledge, Scully. Think about how much we’ve discovered just in the past hundred years, and multiply that by - well - it would all be at your fingertips, Scully, and you’re a _scientist_ , you can’t tell me that doesn’t appeal to you on some level.” 

She remembers this from their early years together: the little-boy wonder in his voice, the excitement glittering in his eyes. Usually it charms her, but now it’s infuriating. She rolls out of his arms and onto her back, away from him. After a moment, she addresses the ceiling. "I’m a scientist, but I’m not you. Knowledge - the truth, _whatever_ \- it's not my highest priority."

"Okay, but—"

"Everyone Fellig ever loved was _dead_ , Mulder. Did you think about that? Everyone, and nothing he learned would ever bring them back." Scully suddenly goes quiet. In her life now, loneliness is only an acquaintance, a visitor who comes and goes; she cannot imagine a day when it could be her only companion. "You could live with that, but I can’t."

"Is that what you think of me?" He sounds hurt and she doesn’t want to hurt him, but - yes, it is what she thinks. Of course it is.

"Isn’t it why I followed you? Your single-minded pursuit of the truth. Your dedication."

Mulder laughs, but it’s a bitter sound. "You think I could live with it, Scully? That I’d sacrifice everything to know the truth?" He doesn’t ask the real question: _do you think I would sacrifice you?_ The omission is a small grace. Even now, she’s not sure that he wouldn’t.

She waits. He’s not looking for an answer, not from her.

He swallows hard and continues, "I’m selfish. I hope you are immortal."

“Don’t." She swings her legs around so she’s perched on the side of the bed, as far from him as she can get without actually leaving the bed.

"If it means I don't have to plan for a life without you. I think it’s pretty clear that I can’t do this on my own."

This has occurred to her before. She still hates him a little for saying it out loud. "What about my life?"

"I told you I was selfish."

"Mulder." She feels guilty before she even asks. "Do you think that you love me more than I—"

"I didn’t say that."

Scully turns her head to look at him, finally. ”Do you think it?"

"Well." He holds her gaze. "I didn’t leave."

She flinches and glares back at him. " _I_ didn’t retreat into a fantasy world and refuse to engage with human beings for an entire year."

"I was _depressed_ , Scully."

"You refused to get help, Mulder!"

He deflates. "Yeah," he says. 

This isn’t the first time they’ve had this fight, or the hundredth. Nothing is ever really over between them. Sometimes it's a blessing. Most of the time it’s not.

"I’ve already buried you once," she says, her voice breaking. On his knees he shuffles across the bed to gather her in his arms, pulling her close enough that she can feel his heartbeat in her bones.

They’ve never really talked about it. Those months after his death: The waiting. The fear, that this was her life now. Food didn't taste like anything; if it weren't for the baby, she's not sure she would have eaten at all. Everything was mechanical. She cannot imagine doing it again.

"I’m sorry," he says, voice muffled in her hair.

"I know."

Some nights when she can’t sleep, she imagines eternity without him. She imagines being alive for so long that she forgets the colors in his eyes, the calluses on his trigger finger. The sound of his voice when he says her name. Her heart clenches.

When he finally speaks again, his tone is thoughtful. "Okay, but if you _had_ become immortal, you wouldn't have aged."

She half-sniffles, half-laughs. "Are you saying I’m getting old, Mulder?"

He tucks his finger under her chin, and when she looks up at him, his eyes are soft. "You really are gonna have to age faster if you want to keep up with me." He runs a hand over his stubble, now half gray. Scully loves the silver in his hair. There were too many years when she thought they’d never live to see it happen. "But you know what I’m saying. If you were immortal, you should look exactly the same as you did when you took that case."

"I’m not sure that’s true. Fellig was an old man."

"He was an old man when he became immortal," Mulder says.

"We don't know that."

Mulder sighs. "I don't know what you want me to say here."

"I've just been thinking about it a lot. Since Mom died."

"You're supposed to be skeptical, remember? What scientific evidence is there for immortality?" he asks, absently stroking her hair.

"There’s a species of jellyfish that can regenerate its own cells. After it matures, instead of dying, it reverts to sexual immaturity, transforming back into a polyp."

"You make jellyfish sound incredibly sexy," he teases.

"Yeah, they taught us that in medical school." He ducks his head and grins, more acknowledgement of her joke than it deserves. She says, "You know, I wanted to live forever. When I met Fellig, on that case. I couldn't understand why he wanted to get rid of it."

"What changed your mind?"

Scully licks her lips, considering. "At that point in my life, I had never really been alone. I grew up in a big family, and I always thought that would be my life. And after I grew apart from them I had you, and our relationship was… _close_ , even if it wasn’t exactly healthy."

He snorts. She knows that he has never agreed with her on this point.

"But what it means," she continues, "is that I didn't have a framework for being alone. But then, when you were gone, Mulder, I was so lonely. No one understood what I - what _we’d_ been through, and I didn’t remember how to talk to normal people. It was impossible, and it was only a few months, not a few lifetimes. I felt like—" She laughs harshly. "I felt like an alien, Mulder, dropped on some strange planet where I didn’t really know the language."

His voice is gentle. "You would learn it, though."

She shivers involuntarily, and Mulder reaches down to pull the quilt back up and tucks it around her shoulders. They huddle together under the blankets, like they have through so many winters in this drafty old house. He is always warm; Mulder is always heartbeat and hot blood and even in their worst moments she has never, ever taken that for granted.

"If it's any consolation," he says, "I wouldn't want to be immortal either. Half the time I barely want the life I have."

She's quiet. Finally: "Mulder, should I be worried about you?"

His smile looks more like a grimace. "Not any more than usual. I promise." 

He pulls the quilt up over his head and she ducks under to join him. The quilt is old and worn and the moonlight passes through it easily. His eyes are shadows. She says, "We’re going to make this work, right?"

He brushes a stray hair from her cheek. "You being immortal?"

"Us being together."

"I’m trying, Scully."

"I know."

In their makeshift fort their breaths mingle. They lay silent for a while, warming up the air between them.

Finally Mulder says, "You should try to sleep, Scully. It’s late."

"I know." But she reaches her hand up between their bodies, rests her fingertips on his forehead. She traces his hairline, memorizing the way his hair falls across the back of her hand no matter how many times she pushes it away. When she runs her fingers along his eyebrows he closes his eyes instinctively, and then she traces his eyelids too, his dark lashes brushing her knuckles.

"What are you doing?" he whispers, her thumb at the bow of his upper lip.

"Just in case," she whispers back. Her fingers continue slow across the familiar landscape of his face; cheekbones, jawline. She can count the nights he stayed up worrying about her in the lines around his eyes. This is what you looked like when I loved you, she thinks.

She watches his Adam’s apple dip as he swallows, understanding. "Scully, I can’t," he says, and when he finally opens his eyes she realizes that there are tears in them. "You’re gonna break my heart." He reaches up and grabs her hand, twining his fingers through hers. He holds their clasped hands between them.

Scully imagines herself doing this every night for the rest of his life, her fingertips charting every new crease and line. Something to carry with her, a map to guide her home.

"I don’t have an eidetic memory, Mulder," she says, willing him to understand.

"I’d be happy to trade, but I don’t think you want the memories I have."

"I have most of the same ones," she reminds him. Another reason she’ll never be at home on Earth again. Some philosopher, she remembers, something about looking too long into the abyss, and the abyss looking back at you. They’ve been shining flashlights into it for twenty-four years now, and how could anyone who hasn’t seen that darkness understand?

Mulder kisses her like it’s the first time, like he isn’t sure of her. His lips are gentle on hers, and she closes her eyes. When he pulls away she pulls him right back, her hands cradling the back of his head. 

"I don’t want to live forever," she says against his mouth. Their noses side by side, still breathing the same air. They are kissing and not kissing, their lips brushing every time they speak.

"I know, Scully."

"I don’t want to go back to sleep." There’s a desperate edge to her voice now and she hates it, but Mulder won’t turn her away, it’s the one real constant in the universe.

"Then let’s say it’s true. Say you are immortal. What would you do differently?"

In a hundred years she’ll still carry his ashes, an impossible weight; in two hundred she’ll wear his memory as a hair shirt. In three hundred, she will see a man with a loping gait and dark hair; without knowing why, she will follow him through alleyways until it is too dark to see. There are lengths of time longer than that, she supposes, but they are beyond her comprehension. For now.

What would she change, if she knew all of that would come to pass?

"Nothing," she says. She could have chosen differently, once. There was a version of herself that loved less, or less desperately, but Scully hardly remembers her. "You know, there are some physicists who think the universe will end in just a few billion years."

"Scully…" His face is worried.

She’s sure that he already knows this, but he'll let her say it anyway. "That everything will be torn apart, and we’ll be able to watch it happen. And everything that was will cease to be." She feels like she is outside her own body, listening to someone else say these words.

"That’s billions of years from now, probably even longer, humanity won’t even exist by then—"

"But I would still know you," she says, knowing that it’s absurd, feeling regardless like it’s the only true thing.

He wraps her up in his arms, tucking her head under his chin. "Jesus, Scully, I hope not," he mumbles into her hair. She inhales him, dust and ink and night sky. And then he goes suddenly stiff, and she holds him tighter, a bulwark against whatever’s coming.

"There were times when I - there are things that can happen," he says, his voice rough but certain, "when someone is alone long enough, or in enough pain."

Her face is still pressed against his t-shirt, so he can’t see her blanch.

"And it’s possible to forget who you were, or that your life was ever anything else." His voice is so quiet. "But I always knew your name."

She doesn’t look up at him, doesn’t want to. There are still some secrets between them. "Mulder, there are people who go their whole lives without this.”

"Maybe it would have been easier."

She lets herself smile. "When have we ever done anything because it was easier?"

"We could start now.” He loosens his grip just enough that she can uncurl herself from him. He brings a hand to the back of her neck, his thumb stroking the fragile skin there. Soothed by his hands, she can already feel the nervous energy leaving her body. Maybe he really is a wizard.

Scully drapes one leg over his hip and pulls him closer. “Show me,” she breathes, and her teeth find the pulse thrumming in his neck. She knows it’ll leave a mark. 

He brushes his lower lip against hers. “You want me to show you how to be easy?” he says, teasing, but his voice is low. One hand in her hair, another at her waist, reaching long fingers up under the hem of her shirt. He angles his head to kiss her more soundly, his stubble rough against her skin.

Arching into him, she says, “If you’re up to the task.” His body, pressed against hers. The heat of him everywhere. Scully doesn’t really believe she’s immortal - she can’t, she won’t - but she will remember this.

He’s tugging her shirt over her head and his, somehow, is already gone. She’s melting against him, falling into his gravity, and he’s right: this is easier. He says, “When have I ever backed down from a challenge?”

“Never,” she admits. “But the world is a big place.”

“I think it’s just the right size.” He tucks the edge of the blanket back over their heads, keeping all of their shared warmth inside.

“This is worth it,” Scully whispers, willing it to be true. His tongue sweeps across her clavicle. They are skin to skin, the burning heart of the universe.

“Of course it is,” he says, and she believes him.


End file.
